Biography

Early years

Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland. He is the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds,[8] and the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds. Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority (5.5% of Finland's population). Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize–winning American chemist, although in the book Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Torvalds is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the Peanuts cartoon character", noting that this makes him half "Nobel Prize–winning chemist" and half "blanket-carrying cartoon character".[9]

Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki between 1988 and 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science from NODES research group.[10] His academic career was interrupted after his first year of study when he joined the Finnish Army, selecting the 11-month officer training program to fulfill the mandatory military service of Finland. In the army he held the rank of second lieutenant, with the role of a ballistic calculation officer.[11] In 1990, he resumed his university studies, and was exposed to UNIX for the first time, in the form of a DECMicroVAX running ULTRIX.[12] His M.Sc. thesis was titled Linux: A Portable Operating System.[13]

His interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20.[14] After the VIC-20 he purchased a Sinclair QL, which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. He programmed an assembly language and a text editor for the QL, as well as a few games.[15][16] He is known to have written a Pac-Man clone named Cool Man. On January 5, 1991[17] he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC[18] before receiving his MINIX copy, which in turn enabled him to begin work on Linux. The first prototypes of Linux was publicly released later that year.[9][19] Version 1.0 was released on March 14, 1994.[20]

From 1997 to 1999, he was involved in 86open helping to choose the standard binary format for Linux and Unix. In 1999 he was named by the MIT Technology ReviewTR100 as one of the world's top 100 innovators under age 35.[21]

In 1999, Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation.[22] That same year both companies went public and Torvalds's share value temporarily shot up to roughly $20 million.[23][24]

His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux,[25] which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.[26]

Although Torvalds believes "open source is the only right way to do software", he also has said that he uses the "best tool for the job", even if that includes proprietary software.[27] He was criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. Torvalds subsequently wrote a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called Git.

In 2008, Torvalds stated that he used the Fedora distribution of Linux because it had fairly good support for the PowerPC processor architecture, which he had favoured at the time.[28] His usage of Fedora was confirmed in a later 2012 interview.[29]

Currently, the Linux Foundation sponsors Torvalds so he can work full-time on improving Linux.[30]

The Linus/Linux connection

Initially, Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTPserver where the kernel was first hosted for download, named Torvalds's directory linux.[31]

Authority and trademark

As of 2006, approximately two percent of the Linux kernel was written by Torvalds himself.[24] Because thousands have contributed to the Linux kernel, this percentage is one of the largest contributions to it. However, he stated in 2012 that his own personal contribution is mostly merging code written by others, with little programming.[32] Torvalds retains the highest authority to decide which new code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.[33]

Torvalds owns the "Linux" trademark and monitors the use of it,[34] chiefly through the Linux Mark Institute.

Personal life

Torvalds in 2002

Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds (née Monni)—a six-time Finnish national karate champion—whom he first met in the autumn of 1993.[35] Linus was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendants to send him an e-mail as a test, to which Tove responded with an e-mail asking for a date.[9] Tove and Linus were later married and have three daughters, Patricia Miranda (born 1996), Daniela Yolanda (born 1998), and Celeste Amanda (born 2000),[36] two of whom were born in the United States.[5] The Linux kernel's reboot system call accepts their dates of birth (written in hexadecimal) as magic values.[37][38]

Torvalds describes himself as "completely a-religious—atheist", adding that "I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both. It gives people the excuse to say, 'Oh, nature was just created,' and so the act of creation is seen to be something miraculous. I appreciate the fact that, 'Wow, it's incredible that something like this could have happened in the first place.'" He later added that while in Europe religion is mostly a personal issue, in America it has become very politicized. When discussing the issue of church and state separation, Torvalds also said, "Yeah, it's kind of ironic that in many European countries, there is actually a kind of legal binding between the state and the state religion."[39]

In 2010, Torvalds became a United States citizen and registered to vote in the United States. He is unaffiliated with any U.S. political party, saying, "I have way too much personal pride to want to be associated with any of them, quite frankly."[5]

Recognition

Awards

IEEE Computer Pioneer Award

On April 23, 2014, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers named Torvalds as the 2014 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Pioneer Award. The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors to recognize and honor the vision of those whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry. The award is presented to outstanding individuals whose main contribution to the concepts and development of the computer field was made at least 15 years earlier.[40]

Internet Hall of Fame

On April 23, 2012 at Internet Society's Global INET conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Torvalds was one of the inaugural inductees into the Internet Hall of Fame, one of ten in the Innovators category and thirty-three overall inductees.[41]

Millennium Technology Prize

On April 20, 2012, Torvalds was declared one of two winners of that year's Millennium Technology Prize,[42] along with Shinya Yamanaka.[43] The honor is widely described as technology's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Academics

In 1997, Torvalds received his Master degree (Laudatur Grade) from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki. Two years later he received honorary doctor status at Stockholm University, and in 2000 he received the same honor from his alma mater.[44] University of Helsinki has named an auditorium after Torvalds and his computer is on display at the Department of Computer Science.

Media

In 2004, he was named one of the most influential people in the world.[52]

In 2006, the magazine's Europe edition named him one of the revolutionary heroes of the past 60 years.[22]

InfoWorld presented him with the 2000 Award for Industry Achievement.[53] In 2005 Torvalds appeared as one of "the best managers" in a survey by BusinessWeek.[54] In 2006, Business 2.0 magazine named him one of "10 people who don't matter" because the growth of Linux has shrunk Torvalds's individual impact.[55]

In summer 2004, viewers of YLE (the Finnish Broadcasting Company) placed Torvalds 16th in the network's 100 Greatest Finns. In 2010, as part of a series called The Britannica Guide to the World's Most Influential People, Torvalds was listed among The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time (ISBN 9781615300037).[56]

Space

In 1996, the asteroid 9793 Torvalds was named after him. In 2003, the naming of an asteroid moon (Linus) was motivated in part by the fact that the discoverer was an enthusiastic Linux user.

Patents

As of March 2011, Torvalds has been granted 35 patents worldwide (application and granted patents).[57]

Controversy

Desktop environment criticism

In 2005, on the official GNOME developmental mailing lists, Torvalds encouraged users to switch to K Desktop Environment 3 rather than use GNOME.[58][59] However, Torvalds thought KDE Plasma Desktop 4.0 was a "disaster" because of its lack of maturity, and so he had switched to GNOME by 2009.[60] Dissatisfied with his perceived loss of productivity, he switched to Xfce after the GNOME 3 release, making another harsh post against GNOME.[61] After improved KDE versions were made, he switched back to KDE Plasma Desktop 4[62] but soon switched back to GNOME 3 stating that "it has been getting less painful"[63] with Frippery and gnome-tweak-tool which he suggested to be merged into GNOME.[64]

Possible NSA approach

In September 2013, Torvalds was asked at the LinuxCon conference whether he had been approached by a US government agency to add backdoors into Linux; he responded with a verbal "no" while nodding his head "yes".[65] He later stated that it was obviously a joke.[66] However, Linus's father Nils states:

When my oldest son [Linus Torvalds] was asked the same question: “Has he been approached by the NSA about backdoors?” he said “No”, but at the same time he nodded. Then he was sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer, [but] everybody understood that the NSA had approached him.

This article was sourced from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. World Heritage Encyclopedia content is assembled from numerous content providers, Open Access Publishing, and in compliance with The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Public Library of Science, The Encyclopedia of Life, Open Book Publishers (OBP), PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and USA.gov, which sources content from all federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government publication portals (.gov, .mil, .edu). Funding for USA.gov and content contributors is made possible from the U.S. Congress, E-Government Act of 2002.

Crowd sourced content that is contributed to World Heritage Encyclopedia is peer reviewed and edited by our editorial staff to ensure quality scholarly research articles.

By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. World Heritage Encyclopedia™ is a registered trademark of the World Public Library Association, a non-profit organization.